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PCBH

PCBH

Well Friday night was another average Kara run.

For one thing the Olympics opening ceremony was on, and everyone was slightly distracted, especially my wife. Hang on, she doesn’t play…. but she does pull my strings, so I had lots of AFK moments while she dragged me back into the living room. I didn’t see anything interesting, always missing what she was excited about – which didn’t make her happy (at all).

Still we had a pretty good group, including a hunter that was sharing top billing on the damage meters with the rogue & I. Unfortunately he was one of those eager to share stats… frequently, as well as introduce us to his raft of “chatty mods” – those ones that spam raid channel.

The tank has him on ignore

We probably should have paid closer attention to the fact that our tank had the hunter on ignore. He couldn’t remember why, so we pressed on.

Things started to go off the rails at Curator. Actually before I get into that, let me tell you about a betting book we run each week… “Who will pull Curator while doing the final trash”. It’s a class based thing, we have found, and you can’t make money on Hunters. If anyone is going to pull Curator midway through the trash, it’s a Hunter…

Anyway, enough digression, for once Curator wasn’t pulled during trash, so we quickly checked who knew the Curator fight.. everyone, good, so here’s how we do it.

Our standard strategy, because we are melee heavy, is to stack up on Curator. One of the team (usually THD), gets marked, we put down a smoke bomb to indicate tanking position, check everyone knows we are bunching up on THD.

Every week there is one person that stands away from the party. Which means every week the flares go down slower that possible, because the melee are chasing the flares down, then have to rush back to Curator when he evocates.

This week was no different, in this case it was the Uber Hunter standing at max range.

I can cope with this, painful yes, tolerable, yes.
We had 2 flares up all the time, once again no big deal.

What got to me in the end (and I admit I had a short fuse on Friday night – lack of sleep courtesy of my little tacker) was that the Hunter was screaming at us all the time to change to his tactics.

The time to decide tactics

Note to all: When tactics are discussed pre-fight either:

speak up with your variations, or

forever hold your peace.

Mid combat is not the time to be changing the plan, which only need to be changed because you aren’t following the original plan.

Anyway, we got Curator down, but for once I couldn’t hold my tongue. So I told Uber Hunter that in future he follows the strategy laid down before combat begins, or at least speaks up before combat begins.

With a “Well if you want to loose your best DPS”, he left raid.

So we loose the 3rd best DPS

Of course, the irony was he wasn’t the best DPS, that was the rogue, and I know I was right on his tail, and would have been higher if not for the constant yelling from my wife from the other room. In fact, Uber Hunter had been at best 3rd placed in any of the boss fights. So we were less good dps, but not the best DPS.

Soon afterward, (and I must admit I missed it at first) THD alerted me to the PCBH (Post Curator Black Hole) and we continued with a rotating group of DPS and healers.

Aran smacked us around again, it has become so tiresome. So we finished up at Chess (where the ring or recurrence dropped again… I think 3rd time in god knows how many months… I got it last week, but it was seriously lucky I wasn’t holding my breath).

What to do in future?

Not sure what we will do in future. Each week is an exercise in gearing PUGS through the 1st half and miserable experiences in the 2nd half.

We might move on to ZA, but we are all still looking for gear from Prince or Netherspite. We are also all dreaming of a full Kara clear. The thought has arisen for some of the crew to try and clear the 1st half during the week, so we can just focus on the 2nd half on Friday. The issue there is there will be more pugs than regulars, might be harder to find a group just for the 1st half and the fear that one of the puggers might return and clear out the rest without us.

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10 Responses

I must admit that this “stack up on Curator” strategy is pretty new to me. Though I’ve done Curator a hundred times (well probably not, but if feels like that), I’ve always done it in a spread-out-mode, where everyone, including ranged dps, are supposed to take down flares until they’re all gone. Possibly with good melee you could leave the very last one to them and let ranged switched after number 9.

But when I pugged Kara last friday I suddenly was confronted with your close-up-strategy. It worked just as well and it was fun to see that there are other ways to do it. As there always are. I definitely had no reason to question it and I really only would have done that if we repetedly had wiped or something.

I feel sorry for you about your frustrations for the Kara nights. You need to try to find a few other decent players who want to join your ranks and spend their friday nights in your company so you can get out of the pug frustrations.
I think you sound like a very nice bunch of people to know… if I was just on your server I’d gladly join you.

Close up or spread out.. either way is fine by me, but not half/half. We have done both, but settled on close up cause:

a) Mobs were centralised, so we call got to hit them, no “target needs to be in front of you” business. they are just there, and dead. Normally down in 6 seconds, I throw a scorch on Curator and twiddle my thumbs
b) the healers prefer it, I am sure THD will pipe up with why. They just find it easier to heal through I think. Early days it helped to have a pally and shadow priest for unlimited heals, but we haven’t had either in months now.

I think PTD just drops HoTs, goes and grabs another beer from the fridge and it is all over when he gets back – people not following the plan mean he misses out on a beer for an extra 2 min.

And we certainly love Hunters (hunters out there, no disrespect intended), they do amazing things… and I love it when a hunter having their first go at Moroes goes… Don’t know if I can, but I will try).

It’s just the Curator.. I don’t get it.. apart from the “non-exisitent” death zone.

Our guild is currently doing MH/BT but I still remember the woes of kara. I run my own group every Saturday and we usually clear it in 3 or so hours. In the old days, when it was our Guild’s progression run it took us probably 4 hours to do the first half. Now we clear the first half in about an hour. Aran and Moroes were are biggest stumbling blocks in Kara. Each one took many weeks to take down for the first time.

It also helps that we are very overgeared for the content. We did a 2 tank, 2 healer, 6 dps run this week and one shotted every boss except for Netherspite (who annoyingly took 3 tries due to DPS not hiding and getting ROFLPWNED by Netherbreath.

I also prefer to run with a pally tank….always. We dont even CC on Moroes. I grab Moroes and he tanks everything else while the DPS burns then down. Kara for 22 badges at this point is much more convenient than a two hour heroic for 4 badges.

Primarily our top melee dps drove the change cause he was envious of the DPS you were outputting on the fight :)

From a healers perspective

When we tried spread technique the sparks were a drama when multiple sparks spawns.

Spawn spark 2….”who do i hate the most?” thinks to himself…..Ahhh look at that tree he’s got heals ticking on everyone. If i kill him we might have a chance at killing these other bozzos..

Spark two cruises straight over to tree…tree barksins and starts healing self and others whilst moving to melee who are moving towards tree with inevitable cross over issue with lag where we both pass each other and the mob is somewhere in the middle.

Usually I’m some distance from spark one who’s being brung down . Sure i could follow the melee group but that means i’m casting insta heals only and can’t show off my big guns….believe me when i say you haven’t lived until you seen a tree show its big hard branches :P but thats a psuedo stack and means you get chain lightning affect.

So when we made the switch it was like “hell yeah” this is heaps easier.. i get aggro its gone in a second. no more need to barkskin…no more running about just focusing on finishing the stubby so i can grab another before we loot.

the chain lightning is a breeze to heal through and our DPS goes balistic when we all group up. top melee and top range can all have some fun.

Mana was an issue at first and i could see that by spreading out this could help low level heals. but if the learn to chain chug mana pots its no biggy

Having only played a hunter to level 8 I was wondering whether the group stack strategy prevents them from usig the bows or guns? if it does perhaps we should just suggest to them they just back out of melee and move in if they get aggro

My experience with PUG Karas is to do the following things (if you dont want bailers and wailers)

1) Start at a reasonable time. Starting too late means people get tired after killing Curator at midnight

2) Armory/inspect people prior to start. People who need gear are people who can’t handle the 2nd half of Kara. Set a spelldamage minimum. Check enchants. Check gems. People who arent prepared wont be committed. Some groups only bring people aged 21 and over, but the point is to set minimums.

3) Start a blacklist. People who are poor teammates and people who are bailers (“cat’s on fire, gtg” then you see them in a BG when you /who them) are people you never bring again.

Addendum: Possibly find another guild who wants to burn through it as much as you do and bring their guildies. At the very least, if one of them leaves, you have another resource to pick from, if possible.

@Chu
1) We try, but RL means we usually aren’t logging on until 8.30 and best case kicking off at9.. some times we get really lucky, but I think I can count those times on 1 finger.

2) This has become a great debate. Lots of inspecting going on, lots of people dropping out of LFG. Often those that are well geared are the 1st to go after Curator and of course if we take lower geared toons, we are slowed down by lack of dps or experience.

To be honest, I would rather give the gear to someone that is lacking it than DE it (I have an auto DE mod, and it always makes me feel sick), especially if the follow instructions.

3) We do have a mental blacklist, but rarely see the same person twice in LFG.

4) We do belong to a couple of guilds to pick up extras, but experience has shown that their are either raiding higher level content, BG’g or grinding. We might pick someone up after PCBH, but usually the gate is open and the delays just start to build and the DC’s increase.

Beginning to think it’s us… not sure what to change, but I am often pondering it at inappropriate times.